Kansas City Star August 29, 2002
Missouri could see role in Iraq attack: Limitless range of B-2 is key
BY SCOTT CANON
With more Arab states making clear they want no part of a U.S. military campaign against Iraq, defense analysts say the possibility of Missouri playing a larger role in an attack grows.
B-2 stealth bombers flew from Whiteman Air Force Base to strike targets in the former Yugoslavia in 1999 and in Afghanistan last fall.
Allies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which gave American forces access to their bases during the Persian Gulf War in 1991, now emphatically reject such a role. That, analysts say, could make the limitless range of the B-2s key. "They become much more vital," said Thomas Keaney, a retired Air Force colonel teaching foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University.
Missouri may not be the only launching pad. Bases in Turkey could be pivotal, as well as air fields reportedly being refurbished in Kurdish-controlled areas of Iraq. Sorties of fighters and lighter bombers could also strike from American aircraft carriers cruising in the Persian Gulf.
Yet a single B-2 flight, equipped to drop large loads of some of the most sophisticated satellite-guided bombs in the U.S. arsenal, delivers the same firepower as an entire squadron of lesser planes dealt in the Gulf War.
And takeoffs from western Missouri would not signal quite so clearly the start of a war as, for instance, sending a dozen B-52 bombers to Incirlik, Turkey.
Still unanswered, however, are questions about the plane's durability.
The Air Force has 21 of the stealth bombers, which cost about $2 billion each. Of those, typically one-third are out of commission at a given time for significant renovation or repairs. An unclassified number of the bombers remain reserved for nuclear missions.
The bombers' matte-black composite skin designed to fool enemy radar has proved susceptible to damage, such as that inflicted by flying into large birds. While the bombers remain air-worthy after such collisions, such dents make the jets less stealthy and the Air Force has struggled to increase the speed of repairs.
Those mendings require hangars that can delicately control heat and humidity levels.
More recently, the Air Force has conceded that cracks have developed on the bat-shaped wings of some of the aircraft - typically behind the exhaust. On most jets, such exhaust does not go over the surface of the plane. But on the B-2 the exhaust spills over the wing to hide it from enemy devices that home in on heat sources.
"It appears to be a plane you can use for three or four days at a time," said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago expert on air power and author of Bombing to Win. "We don't know if the problems have been fixed."
When B-2s flew missions in the first week of the Afghanistan war, they made trips that lasted more than two days, touching ground only to switch their two-man crews in the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. Even then, the planes' engines were never turned off.
The Air Force decided almost a year ago to buy five semiportable shelters for the B-2 - one for Fairford Air Force Base in England and four for Diego Garcia. They would allow sensitive repairs to be made somewhere besides Whiteman.
The first of those shelters was scheduled for delivery late last year. Capt. Don Langley, a spokesman for the B-2's 509th Bomb Wing, said security considerations prevented him from revealing if any shelters are ready.
Most analysts expect the B-2 to play a prominent role in any early attacks on Iraq - with or without the ability to base planes freely in the region - to blast out the country's air defenses in night raids.
But with fewer places for other U.S. squadrons to fly from in the region, pressure would grow to extend the use of B-2s beyond the first few nights of a campaign. Experts say the importance of B-1 and B-52 bombers - with the same long range with refueling - would also rise even though they lack the B-2's virtual invisibility.
"The question then becomes, how much can you push the B-2?" said John Pike of the Globalsecurity.org consulting firm. "You'd want to generate the maximum number of sorties."
© Copyright 2002 The Kansas City Star Co.
